Naveen Rao

Co-founder and CEO of of Nervana

Discussion

Hi everyone. I am Naveen Rao, cofounder/CEO of Nervana (www.nervanasys.com), a tech startup that serves "AI on demand." I enjoy talking about the future of computation, robotics, and neuroscience - but I find a lot of other things interesting too.. Ask me anything!

@katie_fritsch Nervana Neon is a fully supported stack. We don't have to rely on the open source community to fix bugs or add features. This is important to providing a high-end experience to our customers.

Hello Naveen,
Thank you for giving us an opportunity to ask you questions.
Question: As it stands, humans are guided by three books:
1) What we owe is in the IRS book.
2) What we can not do is in the Law book.
3) What we can do is in the Constitution book.
Are there any books being written for AI?
Thank you!

@jacqvon I usually read the latest techblog (TC, Venturebeat, etc). Facebook is a good source of interesting articles..I have the good fortune of being connected with people in the AI space who post good stuff.

@andrewett That's a good question...it seems to be synonymous with deep learning these days. I'd say any system that learns and adapts from data is a form of intelligence. By that measure, more deep learning systems are intelligent, but only at specified intervals when the models are being retrained.

Hi Naveen, thank you for taking the time to do this chat.
I am interested in your thoughts regarding the apparent push towards Conversational UIs by several of the big players? Also regarding conversational AIs - is there any indication that what happened to computer vision with deep learning in the past several years will happen to NLU/NLP?

@tborenst Well, i'd say that's already happened. Most of the state-of-the-art NLP approaches are deep learning now. This transition happened fast just as it did in computer vision.
I think anything that decreases the resistance of using a machine is a good technology. Arcane interfaces like a CLI are great for experts, but make technologies less accessible. By making machines interact more like we do, technologies can become more a part of our life.

I am a grad student in physics, building and numerical simulating all different models, but very limited experience in computer science/AI. Is there any advice to me to enter this field? What's the advantage for us who are not from CS major?

@an_jason Physics and the math you're learning lays the ground work for much of AI. I'd say, get some practical experience. Download Neon (from www.nervanasys.com) and get a model up and running. You'll get a sense really fast for what is easy and what is difficult.
The advantage you have is a broader view on machine learning and the mathematical foundations. CS can be narrow with regards to this subject at some places.

@ems_hodge Robots are moving toward becoming real agents in the world. Currently, they are mostly fixed function...but once they can sense, process, and adapt, there will be a new world of how they can impact our lives.

@ems_hodge Do something interesting. I quit a lucrative career to get a PhD in Neuroscience because I truly was interested in the topic. Find things that are interesting and pursue because you love them.

@andrewett Yann LeCun, Bengio, Hinton are the big ones...they persevered through a time where their ideas weren't taken seriously. That takes belief and guts. I hope to have such convictions about my own work.

@mary_devincenzi I'd say there are 3 major points: 1) amount of data we have access to. This is crucial to being able to build an effective machine learning model and wasn't really the case until the last 10-15 years. 2) fast processing power. These models can take a long time to converge...10 years ago it would have take an entire PhD thesis to train one model. 3) business use case. Now we demand that things learn and adapt to become better. We want this in our internet and device experiences...and that wasn't true in the past (at least not at a large scale)

Hello Naveen,
Was just curious about the newly released iOS app called Prisma which turns the photos into artworks using Deep learning algos. Any thoughts on how these deep learning algos are used here?
Thank you!

@sujith_perla I think this is a cool use of models developed for a different purpose. It appears to reduce an image into some kind of feature space that is pleasing to our eyes...I'd say finding the use for deep nets is much more of an art than making them work these days

Hi Naveen, thanks for the opportunity! I'm a product manager for a robotic surgery company and very interested in the future role of AI/machine learning in making surgery better or eliminating it altogether. Are there any specific companies in this space that interest you? Does Nervana have anything cooking along these lines? Thanks!

@matt_schwartz There are lots of interesting companies like Kindred.ai or others building robotics platforms. It's not clear how this space will sort out just yet though. At Nervana we're focused on enabling research and backend processing in the cloud for these and many other applications. We don't sell specific solutions, but more of a horizontal platform approach

Hi Naveen,
Ive used neon and really love how powerful it is. However the whole community seems to have swayed towards tensorflow recently. With Sundar's recent announcement of TPUs, tensorflow looks like the way to go for something that has community support, proven cloud hosting domain expertise, continual updates, great tutorials and documentation.
What differentiates you guys? In other words why should we build our AI projects around neon and what you guys have to offer?
Thanks

@sarav_1n Neon allows us to provide a fully supported experience to our customers without relying on a 3rd party like Google. We recognize that TF has a lot of mindshare now...and we're working on interoperability with TF in the next few months. Since we are also building our own hardware, we feel it is important to build the stack the right way for our path forward...our performance will be well beyond anything that TF supports. So, I'd say that our solutions will run TF, but we can offer a better, faster, more relaiable experience with our own stack

Good morning Naveen,
With the advances in AI come many potential perils. For example, there is one scenario in which AI takes control of the planet away from the human race. Another is AI automating many human jobs out of existence (which is already happening). What is being done (and what should be done in the future) to mitigate these risks and others? What role should we humans play in designing these intelligent machines to minimize the negative and unintended consequences?
Thank you,
Gopal

@gopalmahadevan1 There are efforts like OpenAI that are attempting to have some responsibility around AI. The thought is, if these technologies are available to all, there will always be a balancing force. At the moment, I don't believe we're headed down the path you describe...AIs are tools that allow us to do more with data. They do not have intent. Their intent is our intent. We should really only fear ourselves here as AI just give us more reach and influence

@naveen_rao@gopalmahadevan1 I would add that automating human jobs should be regarded as a bonus. Is driving a large cargo truck for 8+ hours a day a good use of human abilities? NO! Automate it! Free up humans to do things only humans can do.

@naveen_rao@gopalmahadevan1 Please also recall the history of other jobs that have been automated (e.g., typesetting for printing) only to end up creating a whole new set of related jobs (e.g., graphics designers

Hi Naveen,
It was recently discovered by my health care provider that I have a rare but life-threatening heart condition that may require surgery and implantation of a medical device in my body. The discovery was made by a cardiologist who examined an electrocardiogram (EKG/ECG) that was taken of my heart. A very clear pattern on my EKG was recognized by the cardiologist, which he happened to know was a clear indication that I have the rare heart condition.
Unfortunately, a doctor who took two EKGs of my heart in 2012 showed the exact same pattern, but because he was not familiar with what to look for about my particular syndrome, it went completely overlooked and completely unnoticed until two weeks ago.
How could AI be used by health care providers to recognize patterns on electrocardiograms, ultrasounds, CT scans, etc. to help detect conditions like mine? If so, how long until we start seeing this type of technology put into production?
Thank you,
Ryan

@ryan_loney This is one of the areas I think will be huge in the future. We should have awareness of this kind on every scan, and this is what AI can do. It's not practical for human docs to be able to find every anomaly every time...but machines are tireless and cheap. They can check against the entire database of maladies on every scan, every time